How Do the New Laws Address Short Term Letting?

6 April 2017

In our video series Michael Vumbaca, General Manager at Jamesons Strata discusses how the new laws address short term letting.

With the growing popularity of things like Airbnb and stayz, short-term letting is an enormous piece of the puzzle for strata. An owners corporation can now adopt a model bylaw that requires lot owners to notify the owners corporation at least 21 days before changing the use of their lots, which includes things such as short-term letting. This means that if they intend to change the purpose of their lot, to make it a short-term let, they need to provide the owners corporation with 21 days written notice.

They need to do this as there are often insurance implications for an owner’s corporation if they change the sole purpose of their lot. This new bylaw also allows owners and owners corporations to go to the tribunal against people who use their lot for short-term letting. This enables owners and owners corporations to take action against them in the event that something arises that incurs expense, such as increased insurance costs as a result in changing the use of your lot.

At Jamesons we believe these new legislative requirements will be warmly welcomed as it has been a difficult issue to manage for strata schemes. Whether they’re in favour or against short-term letting, it’s important that there’s a framework for strata to operate under that gives them some guidance in how to resolve disputes should they arise.

This will not be the last you hear about short term letting, we believe that there will be further legislative change on this topic in the future. Who that change favours, we will have to wait and see.

Jamesons are a family run business that have provided Sydney residents with strata management services for over 50 years. If you would like more information regarding strata management, please contact Jamesons Strata Management on (02) 8969 3400.